


The League Twixt Them That Loyal Love Hath Bound

by akathecentimetre



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Clones, Jedi, M/M, The Force moves in mysterious ways
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-11
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-05-01 04:07:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5191550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akathecentimetre/pseuds/akathecentimetre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A mysterious accident leaves Cody with a presence in the Force which he doesn’t understand and which hardly anyone else trusts. And it’s certainly not doing any good for the feelings he’s been harboring for his commanding officer, either...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

*

Cody wakes with a deep, searing breath that makes his chest burn, like the air has turn to fire. When his hands stop flailing and clutch, it is to the sensation of GAR gloves under his own bare fingertips, joints which grip fiercely back and just hold there, neither supporting nor shoving him down again, and he knows ( _knows_ , he thinks briefly, wildly, and that is as it should be but somehow _more_ ) that it’s Rex.

All he can see is color.

That shape there must be Rex’s face, but he’s all ablur with neon, bright yellows and sputtering ochres. Cody blinks, breathes in again, and blinks some more, but if anything, the flashes only intensify – and they _move_ , too, unlike the aura of any concussion he’s ever had, and he’s had a few.

“Hey,” Rex says, and he sounds like himself, at least. “You hear me?”

“Uh-huh,” Cody says, and swallows. The air buzzes. “What the _fuck –_ ”

“The Temple collapsed while you were in it,” Rex starts, and now his hands are starting to push Cody down again, setting his halo dancing. “You’re okay. We’re getting you back to Coruscant.”

Cody blinks harder, watches rainbows flit closer to his mind’s eye, as though seeking an old friend. “Why?”

Rex hesitates, and Cody can _feel_ it, like uncertain words have been spoken and made flesh. “You were dreaming,” Rex whispers, and Cody falls down into darkness knowing that no –

– that’s impossible.

Clones don’t dream.

*

It was a pisstake of a mission, Cody remembers, much later. Not that the circumstances were any less grim than usual, because in fact they had been worse – a distant Jedi outpost, a rudimentary but ancient Temple set up on an Outer Rim planet, the legacy of ancient wars. No: the mission had been easy because it had only been a cleanup job. Twenty Jedi, massacred by Separatist troops. The Council had insisted on their retrieval, and upon receiving the mission briefing Cody had known from the look on General Kenobi’s face that the 212th would be the battalion to claim it, with the 501st joining them for an anticipated subsequent jump into hyperspace, back into the war.

Cody remembers it being quiet, in the smoldering ruins. The sort of silence which only falls in wastelands, evidenced by flesh dried away to the bone on a planet so bereft of life that the fallen hadn’t been scavenged even by insects.

 _Too_ quiet, he remembers thinking. And then he remembers voices, and lifting his blaster, and then – nothing.

Or rather, something. In fact, it must have been a hell of a something, because when he next wakes up he’s in a hospital bed at the Coruscant Temple, with Rex rigid and stone-faced by his side, and though the colors haven’t let up he can at least see a bit better, now, and Rex puts a hand on his shoulder when he looks sideways up at him, teeth gritted behind his lips, and it begins.

They come one after the other. Master Windu, stern and disbelieving. Ki-Adi Mundi, with his arms crossed and his brow furrowed. Plo Koon, expressionless, unreadable. Their questions are sideways and probing, asking about the forsaken Temple and its surroundings, about the evidence of his senses, about how he is feeling. None of them tell him what the fuck is going on or what’s apparently wrong with him, and through it all Rex’s hand tightens on Cody’s shoulder like a vise, until he’s latched around Cody’s collarbone and it’s starting to hurt.

 _Stop it,_ Cody thinks, too tired to say it out loud, and, inexplicably, Rex looks down at him sharply, his eyes widening, and a vein pulses in his forehead like Cody’s thought has been made real and insidious.

The door to his solitary room opens once more, and Cody half-smiles, finally, at the sight of a marginally more friendly face. General Kenobi looks pale, his eyes quick and concerned as he takes in Rex and Cody, sitting half-upright in the bed and itching to tear off his various monitors, and when he stands at Cody’s side and takes one of his hands between both of his he is cool, as though wind-chilled, like he’s flown directly from the nearest spaceport in an open-topped speeder to be here.

“What happened?” he asks, gently, and Cody can’t help but let a sigh of relief leak out of him.

Kenobi is the first in this whole mess to say that, rather than _What have you done?_

“He’s been dreaming,” Rex says shortly, before Cody can open his mouth. “When he was first out of it, from the explosion. And on our way back here, too.”

Obi-Wan frowns back and forth between the two of them. “And?”

“We don’t, sir,” Cody says, hoarsely, and coughs to clear his throat. “Clones – don’t.”

Kenobi’s expression clears, but only slightly. “Be still,” he murmurs, and leans closer – he puts those cool hands on either side of Cody’s face, his eyes slide half-shut, and Cody feels his own doing the same, until he’s in half-darkness again, soothing his headache.

“What did you dream of?” Kenobi says; he sounds distant, as though very far away.

“I don’t know. Colors – I think. Voices. Not ones I know.”

He’s never – _felt_ like this, Cody realizes, and it’s a slow, shivering sort of idea, that has him opening up one of his palms; Rex’s hand slots into it, gives him something to grab. “Sir, I – _feel –_ ”

A sharp intake of breath; he opens his eyes, sees Obi-Wan staring at him in mute astonishment.

“Yes,” the Jedi says, quietly. “You feel it. I know that moment very well.”

“ _Kriffing_ Jedi,” Rex snarls, and though Cody knows Kenobi will excuse the Captain’s tone he can’t excuse the sentiment, even if he might agree with it. “What’s wrong with him?”

“Nothing,” Kenobi says instantly; there is a peculiar war going on across his face, as though he wants to smile but doesn’t quite know how, or why. “You will be perfectly all right.”

Cody’s headache flares, suddenly; he hisses, presses the heel of his hand to the bridge of his nose.

_Can you hear me?_

He stares at Kenobi, wide-eyed.

 _Yes_ , he mouths.

“By the Force,” Obi-Wan sighs. “It’s true.”

*

They knock him out with an industrial-strength painkiller, administered by Kenobi’s own hands. He’s too tired to protest, even wants to curl up and just lie there, which is perhaps the strangest part of this whole ordeal so far. When he wakes, he has been moved; it is dark and warm, and the city is blinding with bright lights and slow-moving speeders outside the wide window. It’s a real bed, too, in a real bedroom; when he slowly drags himself out of it, his bare feet sink into deep carpet.

Rex is sitting up in the kitchen-cum-living area, spotlighted under a single ceiling lamp, watching him warily. It’s more familiar now, Cody remembers, as he feels his way along the wall in order to keep himself steady; he’s been in the Temple a few times before, to fetch his General, and this place looks just as spartan as any Jedi quarters he’s seen in space.

He stops briefly, swaying, when he thinks he hears whispers. They seem to burst like white noise at the corners of his senses, speaking words he can’t discern.

“So,” Rex says, with a smirk and a smile in his voice that isn’t fooling either of them. “You’re a Jedi now, huh?”

Cody sits gingerly, accepts the lukewarm, half-drunk cup of tea that Rex slides into his hands. “Is that what they’re saying?”

“They’re not sure. But General Kenobi is. He says the Force has gotten into your head.”

Cody winces, retreats a little further, shuts his eyes against the spark of brilliant green and silver that flashes across his irises. “Did he say it would go away?”

“Not sure that’s how it works, mate,” Rex says, softer.

Cody takes a deep breath and, very slowly, methodically, and carefully, starts reciting the GAR Rifle Maintenance Manual in his head, word for word.

 _Stripping your weapon_ , he thinks, drowsily, as the sun starts to come up, and he opens his eyes, briefly, to see that Rex has conked out on one of the sofas, snoring face-down into a cushion. _Disassemble the rifle as demonstrated on page ten_ …

It calms him. Always has. Sends him into a place where he has sometimes thought, fancifully, he can never be touched. The whispers hush and recoil until they become no louder than the hum of lights or the steaming kettle Rex forgot to turn off; the colors dim, or rather transmute, because when it is full morning and Cody, feeling a touch on his arm, rouses himself from his stupor he looks up to see that every inch of General Kenobi has been enhanced by it, his eyes bluer than Cody has ever seen and filtered, fractured sunlight from the cityscape highlighting russets and gold in his hair.

Cody nearly stops breathing, he’s so beautiful.

“Meditating already,” Obi-Wan murmurs. He is smiling gently, reminding Cody of whenever the General has welcomed new clone troopers into the 212th, that look of bewildered wonderment he wears when he hears them swear their loyalty to the Republic, to the GAR, to _him_. “I told Mace I believed you would be a fine student, but you have outstripped even my expectations.”

“Sir?”

“Come,” Obi-Wan says, and helps lift him up by his elbows; a flurry of cloth, and Cody finds he has been wrapped up in a cloak which matches Kenobi’s own, heavier than he would have imagined after looking at them for so long, thick and warming. “I’m afraid I must subject you to one more trial. Quietly, now – no need to wake Rex.”

Cody’s still too tired to object to the hoverchair Kenobi commandeers to take the both of them speeding through the Temple; with his hood up and pulled low over his face, he takes the few more minutes of quiet he has to try and catalogue the real physical pains he knows he has, the bruises and incipient stress fractures in his bones from the collapse in the Temple. He can _see_ each hurt as though he is a surgeon and they have been laid out before him; the only thing he can liken it to is a sort of living x-ray vision, as though he’s stepped outside his body and flayed open his skin for anyone to gawp at.

An elevator, then another; they are ascending so far above the city that when Cody briefly opens his eyes and catches a glimpse of the world flashing by outside the glass, he feels a brief swirl of what must be vertigo, a thoroughly alien sensation.

“Tell us what happened, you must, Commander,” says a wrinkled, kindly voice, then, and Cody opens his eyes to find himself standing in front of the assembled Jedi Council, as though he’s waking from a deep sleep. Startled, it takes him a moment to remember what to do – _damn it, come on, SOP, you’ve seen them all before on hundreds of comm messages_ – but he does it nonetheless, standing to attention, putting one hand behind his back and grabbing his wrist firmly with the other, knowing that he has taken himself away from the hovering, subtle, offered support of General Kenobi’s own hands, waiting to see if he would fall.

“Sir,” he says, and, keeping his eyes firmly fixed on Yoda’s, begins.

They make no sound, not during his brief description of the mission briefing, nor when he describes the scene that awaited him and his squad when they arrived on the distant planet’s surface – the pillars of stone standing out starkly against the sky, the lingering smell of scorching blaster bolts. When he gives them figures (twenty-three dead, six male, ten female, seven Padawans), he thinks he senses a ripple of tensed shoulders, but that is all.

He remembers something more, though, for the first time, as though talking about it has jarred it loose. A sound, before the first falling stone had crashed into his back and sent him flying: a voice, calling his name.

“Your name, you say,” Yoda says, interrupting for the first time. His little black eyes are beady and calculating. “Certain, are you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“A voice you knew, this was?”

“No, sir.”

“Hmm,” Yoda says, and turns to Kenobi. “Go into the Archives with him you will, Master Kenobi, at the first opportunity. Attempt to match the Commander’s recollection with recordings of those Jedi who were massacred, you will.”

“A communication from beyond this life is not unheard of,” Windu says; he still looks most put out by Cody’s presence, as though puzzling out an intruder. “But this – _manifestation_ of the Force seems quite impossible.”

“Clones are not designed to be born with midichlorians,” Shaak Ti says thoughtfully. “Are we meant to believe this was overlooked in the Commander’s case? Is there reason to believe his batchmates might be similarly affected?”

“His blood has been tested,” Kenobi replies calmly, though Cody thinks, somewhat absurdly, that his General understands completely how it is galling him, however correctly, to be talked about as though he’s not standing right in front of them, as though this isn’t happening _to him_. “There is no sign of midichlorian activity or generation.”

“Then left with a mystery, we still are,” Yoda hums. “What are your recommendations, Master Kenobi?”

“I will train him.”

Cody looks sideways, knows his mouth has fallen open – thinks, _What_.

“Unacceptable,” Windu says sharply. “You cannot be absent from your fleet even for the time basic Initiate training would take, Obi-Wan.”

“He is no Initiate. I found him consciously meditating this morning. Whatever you might doubt of his ability in the Force, he is a highly-trained warrior and has immense physical and mental potential. I will not be dissuaded.”

“Agreed,” Yoda says, and, just like that, the debate seems to be ended. The ancient master is already hauling himself out of his chair, reaching for his gimer stick – and when he beckons to Cody with one clawed finger, it feels easy to kneel down to him, to lean in close and think that he is about to hear something extraordinary.

“Most important, you may be, Commander,” Yoda rasps. “Disappoint us, I know you will not.”

Cody barely has time to nod before the Jedi are standing in a swirl around him; they leave the council chamber without a word, and despite his obvious annoyance none of Windu’s opprobrium visibly makes its way in Cody’s direction. Within moments, as he struggles back to his feet, he is alone with Obi-Wan, and, once again, dead fucking tired.

“What just happened?” he asks.

“I won an argument,” Kenobi says, with a grin. “I believe that fills my quota for the year.”

Cody wants to laugh, but can’t quite manage it. “So what happens now?”

“Now, you go back to bed,” Obi-Wan says directly, and puts a hand under Cody’s elbow again. “Tomorrow will be quite soon enough to start teaching you just what this is.”

“I get the feeling I have a lot of catching up to do.”

“You were always most perceptive.”

“Sir,” Cody says, and stops walking before he is able to be ushered back onto the hoverchair; Obi-Wan turns to him and waits, his hands in his sleeves, quiet and trusting. “What does this all mean?”

The General takes a long moment to answer, and when he does, Cody is not much comforted by the fact that, for the first time, his Jedi’s words are accompanied by a helpless little shrug, as though the impossible has happened (there’s a lot of that going on) and he doesn’t know what to say.

“We shall just have to wait and see, Commander,” he finally says. “But I can assure you, you will not be alone in finding your answers.”

Cody nods, and sits, since it’s the only thing he feels capable of doing, anymore, and by the time the elevator has brought them barely halfway down to earth he is fast asleep.

*

**TBC**

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edmund Spenser's _Amoretti_ , Sonnet 65:
> 
> THe doubt which ye misdeeme, fayre loue, is vaine  
> That fondly feare to loose your liberty,  
> when loosing one, two liberties ye gayne,  
> and make him bond that bondage earst dyd fly.  
> Sweet be the bands, the which true loue doth tye,  
> without constraynt or dread of any ill:  
> the gentle birde feeles no captiuity  
> within her cage, but singes and feeds her fill.  
> There pride dare not approch, nor discord spill  
> the league twixt them, that loyal loue hath bound:  
> but simple truth and mutuall good will,  
> seekes with sweet peace to salue each others wou[n]d  
> There fayth doth fearlesse dwell in brasen towre,  
> and spotlesse pleasure builds her sacred bowre.


	2. Chapter 2

*

Cody manages to sleep through most of a cycle; by the time he wakes again, swaddled and uncoordinated in the quarters that are now apparently his, it is dawn again, and Rex is suiting up in the kitchen, packing the weapons he had brought with him back onto his person from a safe in a cupboard under the sonic sink, the panels of his armor clicking as he folds spare clothes away into a small kitbag.

“Going somewhere?”

“Couldn’t claim _that_ much personal leave – even for you,” Rex says, and laughs. “It’ll be a miracle if General Skywalker’s still alive by the time I get back.”

“Ahsoka will have covered for you.”

“Sure.” Rex’s hands stop moving, and he turns to Cody with the sort of look Cody knows very well, the one which says _Don’t bullshit me, because you know I can put you through this wall_. “You gonna be okay?”

“No karking idea. Do I look okay?”

“Yeah,” Rex says, more thoughtfully, glancing him up and down. “You kinda do. It’s weird.”

And then he leans in closer, and his grin is pure Rex, sly and filthy. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well hell, if you _had_ been having dreams this past year I know damn well who would’ve starred in ‘em –”

“Yeah, like that’s really going to happen now that he’s not only my superior officer, but apparently my Jedi Master as well,” Cody grumbles, and turns away to look for some sort of caf, which he suddenly desperately needs. “Fuck you.”

“Don’t shoot the messenger,” Rex giggles, but he’s already wising up, and when he puts an arm around Cody’s shoulders and hauls him into his neck it’s with a sigh, and some sort of final appeal to closeness. “Hey,” he murmurs. “Take care of yourself. Don’t lose us.”

“Never,” Cody manages to say; he’s felt after-battle grief before, many times, but it’s never felt quite like this, like he’s being carried away by a riptide, and for a moment it’s a struggle not to fist his fingers in what little hair Rex has.

He wanders around his rooms for a few minutes, once Rex has left, but finds himself, eventually, just looking out at the reflections of the city, his cooling caf forgotten. The cloak borrowed from (or given by?) General Kenobi seems to beckoning to him, so he pulls it off the back of the chair where it’s been crumpled, shrugs it around his shoulders, and tells himself that, for lack of a better word, he’s going on recon as he slips out into the Temple.

He’d always known it was beautiful. He knows what the word ‘beautiful’ is supposed to mean, and he’s always been told – or just known, from the way Obi-Wan’s face would change when he talked about it – that the Temple qualified for the description (as does other things, other people, one person in particular, as he’s already known). But he’s never realized, before what it consists of:

– silence, mostly, and the patter of neatly-shod feet. Every once in a while, trickles of water or the rustle of leaves will break it, and when he turns corners to find indoor fields of grass, breaks in the distant roof which allow sunlight to stream downwards, he stops, and stands still, and feels as though each and every sound has been amplified, made physical as they wash over him. There is no statue which is life-sized; they are all built to amaze and tower over him, but somehow, when Cody looks up into their faces, it’s as if he’s known them all his short life.

He doesn’t attract much attention – with his hood drawn over his face, he can only guess that the slight turns of the head he receives whenever a Jedi cross his path are down to their knowing that he doesn’t know what the hell to do with the rush he can feel prickling through his veins. The sense of distance is suddenly acute, he finds himself thinking – kriffing hells, what is he doing here?

He’s not meant to be alone. He’s not meant to be different. He’s not meant to be special, and he as sure as hell had never wanted to be, and he didn’t fucking _ask for this –_

Cody has to stop both thinking and walking, abruptly, as a small form spills across his path; there is a whole group of them, in fact, a gaggle of wide-eyed, chattering Younglings who are too old to be in a nursery but still, clearly, far too young to start growing braids; Cody cannot judge them much more precisely than that, having never really figured out how to tell any being’s age on sight (for obvious reasons). They are clumsy and disheveled, little droids scurrying in their wake, and as the one who barreled into him rights himself Cody feels himself smiling unbidden.

“Sorry, Master!” the miscreant gasps, patting nervously at the edge of Cody’s cloak. “I didn’t mean to run into you.”

“Oh, I’m not – hah,” Cody says, and smiles wider. “I’m not a Master.”

“You’re kinda old to be just a Knight,” the boy says, guilelessly, and yelps at the swat he promptly receives from the Calamari child at his side for his rudeness.

One of the other Younglings is a little Anzati girl: telepathic, Cody remembers, and the tentacles on either side of her nose are wriggling as she stares up at him, wide-eyed.

“Warm,” she sighs, blinking, and then, blushing, she folds into a deep bow, and turns to usher her friends away from Cody without a further glance.

Cody watches them go, tumbling over each other, chased by a miscreant blaster practice droid which, sending its little bolts at their backs, makes them shriek and giggle, throwing their little palms up into the air and sending streaks of green shooting away into nothingness. He watches them for so long, in fact, with his hands tucked into opposite sleeves (it seems such a natural thing to do, and comfortable, too), that it takes him a few minutes to realize he’s being called to.

Well – not called, per se. There’s no voice shouting his name. But there is a tug, of sorts, a pull at a place deep in his core which, he knows from long experience, is where his instinct has always lived. And it’s very rarely led him astray, either, so when he turns and follows it back into the bowels of the Temple, away from the towering main hall and the wary stares of the ancients, he thinks – he _knows_ – he’s on the right track.

He finds General Kenobi in a practice room, down a quiet hallway, somewhere easy to miss even though it’s enormous inside, high-ceilinged and its floor covered with mats familiar from basic training on Kamino. The Jedi is sitting cross-legged, head bowed, his open palms on his knees, and when Cody settles down likewise across from him he smiles, though he doesn’t open his eyes.

“Good morning, Commander,” he says, faintly dream-like. “How are you feeling?”

“Normal,” Cody says honestly, though at the slight upquirk of one of Obi-Wan’s eyebrows, he concedes that he needs to alter that a bit. “Mostly. I feel healthy.”

“Good.” A pause, and then finally, Obi-Wan looks at him, with a slight sigh. “I must confess I have been somewhat at a loss as to how to fulfill my promise to the Council, Cody,” he continues. “It has taken many hours of meditation to decide how I might introduce you to the ways of the Force in a way which does not demean you, nor do a disservice to our way of life.”

“Demean me?”

“Well,” Obi-Wan says, with a smirk familiar to the 212th, “I can hardly expect you to call me Master. And I doubt you would take kindly to being called a Padawan.”

Cody thinks briefly of Ahsoka, of how it would actually be a pretty damn big honor to earn such a title, and particularly if it were attached to Kenobi saying it; but in the interest of keeping ahold of something that’s still _him_ , he’s willing to let it go. “Fair enough. Is there a plan, sir?”

“There is no question of you becoming a full Jedi,” Obi-Wan says, with a shake of his head. “And – do correct me if anything I say is mistaken – I doubt you would want to be counted or treated as such. You owe far more of your identity to your brothers and the GAR than anything life at the Temple could offer you in the short-term. I do not intend to take a clone and make him a Knight.

“A Force-sensitive clone commander, on the other hand,” he adds, and this time his smile seems much more genuine – “that is indeed a creature to be reckoned with, and – I would think – all the stronger for it. With your permission, I will teach you what I think will enhance your abilities as the man you already are, taking advantage of what you already know and can perform. Are we agreed?”

“I’m not sure I know what any of that means, sir,” Cody says, quietly. “But it sounds like a start.”

“Very good. Then watch, and listen.”

Cody settles a little more comfortably – damn his aches and bruises – as Obi-Wan picks up his lightsaber hilt from his side, its gold and chrome plating quite familiar to Cody from all the times he’s had to go picking it up in the General’s wake. As he watches, Obi-Wan’s hands open, and the lightsaber floats in mid-air between the Jedi’s palms, slowly rotating.

For the first time in a very long time, the display of power (and downright magic) doesn’t startle Cody in the least.

“Each Jedi’s relationship with the Force is personal and intimate,” Obi-Wan begins; the lightsaber clicks, and its casing seems to suddenly split into several different parts, nearly making Cody jump. “I cannot teach you precisely how to communicate with it, Commander, nor do I expect you to understand its mysteries. It is a friend, a tool, a guide all in one; to tap into its infinities can be overwhelming, and occasionally very dangerous.”

“Well, none of that’s new,” Cody mutters, and thankfully Obi-Wan takes it as the joke it is meant to be as his lips curve into a smile, probably remembering every time Skywalker and Tano have proven these principles to their men on the battlefield.

“This is the part where I find myself perplexed,” Obi-Wan says; the lightsaber has continued to break down and slowly shimmer in his hands, its constituent parts drifting free from each other, and, unexpectedly, Cody can see a bright light at its core, jewel faces glinting sharply. “The key to any Jedi’s relationship with the Light of the Force is based entirely on peace. Peace within oneself, peace with one’s fellow beings, peace with the state and circumstance of the universe. Without peace and balance, the power of the Force seduces, encourages rage, makes fear fester.”

He looks directly at Cody, his expression flatly solemn. “You will forgive me for saying so, Cody,” he finishes, quietly – “but you were not bred for peace.”

Cody stares at the crystal in the heart of Kenobi’s lightsaber, thinking. He can feel the peace Obi-Wan describes – it seems to be smothering him, pressing warm and heavy upon them both. It also feels _Other_ , like it’s not meant to be his, and that’s probably important.

But it is – beautiful. The word, once again, seems to apply.

“No,” he shrugs. “I guess I’m not. But that doesn’t mean I can’t want it, right?”

“Just what I hoped you would say,” Obi-Wan murmurs. The lightsaber hilt clicks quickly and efficiently back into its original configuration; Obi-Wan’s hands close around it, and then he stands, leaving Cody behind him and somewhat bewildered, unsure if he should be following.

When Kenobi comes back from the other end of the room, he’s holding out a GAR standard-issue blaster rifle to Cody, and still smiling. “Your turn.”

“What?” Cody asks, genuinely confused, though also pathetically relieved that his first use of the Force would not be inflicted on something as precious as his General’s weapon. “I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

“Nonsense,” Obi-Wan says, businesslike as he sits down again and puts the rifle into Cody’s nerveless hands. “I know you can strip and re-assemble this weapon in your sleep, Commander. You will simply be using new tools.”

He puts his hand up; brushes his fingertips over each of Cody’s eyes, encouraging his lids to close, and despite himself, several parts of Cody go rigid at the sudden contact, clutching hard at the barrel and shouldergrip of the rifle.

“Hush,” Obi-Wan whispers. “Look within yourself, and find what puts you at peace. You already know how.”

Cody sighs out what tension he can, hefting the rifle out in front of him across his open palms.

Thinks: Kamino, and that bewildered knowledge that even though they’re nothing, they’re not alone.

Thinks: the 212th, and his men, and knowing that they’re alright.

Thinks: Rex, and that particular exhausted smile that they both wear when it’s over for the day and they’re both still alive.

Thinks: Obi-Wan, and the stillness of him, and the way he looks at Cody like –

_Pull up on the trigger guard._

_Slide stock free of the weapon._

_Disable electronic firing mechanism. Locate assembly rod. Slide out guide-pin…_

It takes him a long while to realize that the rifle has gone weightless in his hands. Cody opens his eyes just the tiniest fraction, almost subconsciously – and when he does, he can see, hazily, the various components of the weapon moving on their own, assuredly, even taking on the exact aspect he remembers they would have were he doing the work himself.

But he still _is_ , he sees suddenly: it is working and flowing through him, this strange power, and not as though he is only its vessel, as it had felt in those immediate moments after he’d first woken up. This is his, and it knows it, too.

 _Faster_ , he thinks, and the rifle clicks and whirrs. _I was always the best in the squad at this…_

He works his way through the entire section of the manual, from disabling the safety and firing to clear the barrel all the way until the gun is in entirely useless parts; and then he puts it back together again, and by the time he has reached the final page of his memorized instructions he has his eyes closed again, not even needing to look, and there is exhaustion creeping up on him, as though the Force, too, got smashed to the ground under a rock not three days before.

The intact rifle falls back into his hands; Cody sways where he sits, and Obi-Wan’s hands are strong on his shoulders as he lets out a hitching little breath which he had apparently been holding and lets the weapon tumble, clumsily, into his lap.

“Exceptional, Commander,” Obi-Wan says. He actually sounds excited, as Cody blearily looks at him; he’s as alight with wonder as though he’s witnessed a quasar burst in deep space, and isn’t sitting on a worn gym mat with his lightsaber forgotten by his side.

*

It’s patently obvious, once Cody has the energy to think about it for more than a few seconds, that Master Windu was correct to admonish General Kenobi for taking the time to stay with Cody at the Temple. After that first day, when he falls into bed with his head aching and every nerve-ending tingling and buzzing like he’s been subjected to a series of electric shocks, he thinks to himself that they don’t ( _he_ doesn’t) have that long to get this right. A ten-day, perhaps, is all he can hope for; certainly no longer, given what they both know about the war and the fact that Grievous is starting a new rampage towards the Core from the Outer Rim.

He thinks of Basic Training, of months of overstuffing his mind and exhausting his body, and decides, when he gets up on the second morning, that he can do this – and that he will.

Force pushes are incredible fucking things. It would be impossible for him to catalogue a full list of every time he’s been in close combat and needed even just an extra few inches to make his blaster come to bear; in the end, it’s far more trouble to re-learn just how to wield a rifle with one hand than it is to become supremely comfortable with the thrust of his open palms, of feeling the surge of half-gleeful strength that pulses out of him and pushes his erstwhile enemies (it is just Obi-Wan, for now, accepting the hit and landing in graceful, grinning crouches) away from him.

Meditation is something quite different, but he has references for it nonetheless – he keeps coming back to those quiet times after a battle, not when they’re strung out and frantic and shaking into sleep, but when they’re on their way back from a front, when their ships are in hyperspace, and they know that the only thing awaiting them is a week’s worth of shore leave.

The extension of his senses feels natural, and will prove extremely useful. He finds that it requires the same degree of calm that meditation encourages, similar to the certitude he knows he has to employ every time he gives an order to an inferior. This is also, however, when he feels his first pang of separation from what he was – where previously he would have commanded someone to track down an enemy, he can do it himself from a distance, and despite the safety he could now provide he still feels as though some sort of essential purpose has been undermined and lost.

On the fifth day of their colonizing the same practice room – into which Cody has seen no other Jedi trespass, a privilege indeed – Cody strips out of his cloak just in time for Obi-Wan to hold out a lightsaber to him. It has a black wrapped handle, and the way Obi-Wan offers it (in both hands, studiously relaxed) makes him think that it must be very precious.

Cody looks at the hilt, looks at Kenobi, and back down again. “That’s not a practice weapon.”

“No, it is not.”

“Are you sure I’m ready for this, sir?”

“You won’t know until you try,” Obi-Wan says, with a hint of a smile. “And as Master Yoda always implies – we are not the sort of beings who try and fail, are we?”

Cody has been thinking about Kamino a lot, lately. He remembers blasters and cannons put in hands too small to hold them; how he had practically fallen over backwards the first time a weapon discharged in his arms, and how his trainer had simply said _Get up_.

He picks up the lightsaber; Obi-Wan, with a brief nod, moves away from him, leaving Cody to carry out his inspection as he unwraps his outer tunics. The red button takes a harder touch than Cody would have expected to ignite the blade – when it springs out in front of him it is bright green, and throbs, _hard_ , sending shockwaves up his arm.

“Shit,” he blurts, and quickly brings up his other hand so he can wrap both sets of fingers around the hilt, muscles cording in his arms and shoulders just to keep the damn thing steady. “Is it supposed to feel like that?”

“I checked its power cell and electronics before bringing it here,” Obi-Wan says; the snap and hiss of his own saber lighting up sends a second hum ricocheting around the room, the two frequencies bouncing haphazardly off of each other. “It is in perfect working order – though yes, I will admit that it is quite a weapon to throw at you on your first try. It belonged to a Master whose skills as a swordsman were quite legendary.”

Cody doesn’t particularly want to ask. It’s taking everything he has to concentrate on it, to get the damn thing to stop _talking_ to him. Whatever vestige of the Force its former master left behind, or indeed what presence it has itself, is making the blade twist its way through him as though it’s seeking an answer to the question of who dares wield it.

“I’m afraid we don’t have the time for me to lecture you on the long history of form variants,” Obi-Wan says, as he drops into the Soresu _en garde_ that Cody learned to recognize long ago. “I propose that you attack, and I will defend, and we will see how we fare.

“After all,” he adds, and now there’s something very familiar about the twinkle in his eye that Cody had learned to dread while on campaign – that evil, ever-so-slightly manic warning of impending, joyful chaos – “I understand you come quite highly rated in hand-to-hand combat, Commander.”

 _Well_ , Cody thinks, feeling his eyebrows shoot skyward.

_Damn it, I should never have let Rex get me drunk._

He adjusts the lightsaber slightly in his hands, settling the hilt more solidly into his palms, and, with a deep breath, barrels forward.

The shock of the blades meeting is much stronger than he ever would have expected – savage, almost, nowhere near as civilized or genteel as he had always assumed from watching the brisk, choreographed patterns woven by General Skywalker, Commander Tano, or Obi-Wan himself. But it’s still not strong enough to throw him off-balance (not when he’s handled anti-tank mortars on his own), and he’s quick to find his feet when Obi-Wan parries him easily, diverting him sideways. He tries low strokes, letting the hilt leave one hand so he can follow through with a full sweep; he tries two-handed chops from above, knowing that if he were in a real duel he’d be leaving his midriff dangerously exposed, but wanting and needing to try it anyway. Every single effort is deflected away, as Obi-Wan’s much-smaller form dances away from him, their bare feet covering yards of mat with every attempt.

Obi-Wan seems to sense when he’s run out of ideas, because it takes barely a flick of his arm for the lightsaber to go flying from Cody’s hands; the deactivated hilt lands somewhere behind him with a thump, and Cody doesn’t dare look at it, because he’s got a blue blade humming inches from his neck and he’s learned enough in his time to know that you don’t ever take your eyes off an opponent, Jedi or otherwise.

“A decent start,” Obi-Wan says; he’s smirking, the bastard, though Cody can feel the fondness of him, the genuine pleasure of the spar filling up his head. “Summon the blade and we’ll begin again.”

Unbidden, as he calms his body down from its high, Cody thinks of what Obi-Wan had said at the beginning of this whole mess, about how they would figure out what this meant for him in particular, and what sort of pseudo-Jedi he could be, and he thinks:

 _No. I don’t need the lightsaber_.

Either Obi-Wan is feeling indulgent, or Cody’s first move really does take him by surprise; the quick, brutal Force-push Cody slams sideways into his sword-wrist sends his lightsaber flying out of his reach, and then they really are up in each other’s spaces and Cody feels more comfortable than he has done in weeks. Without his armor, he’s more flexible than he ever is in combat, and he’d managed to get a hell of a lot done even under those circumstances; he sends jabs and punches in to Obi-Wan’s defending forearms, advances with quick footwork and manages to catch a flailing wrist in one hand, asking the Force to give him the strength to make sure his grip can’t be broken, and, miraculously, it does.

And then he decides to fight dirty, because one tends to learn quite a bit from breaking up the 501st’s barfights when Rex is laughing too hard to do it himself, and wraps a leg around Kenobi’s, and it’s only when they’re flat on the floor with Obi-Wan pinned beneath him and fallen limp, just staring up at him, that Cody starts to think he’s made a dreadful mistake.

“Fuck,” he breathes, and Obi-Wan blinks, and it’s only when Cody sees, out of the corners of his eyes, that his own arms have started to tremble that he realizes that in the middle of having his brain and his world and most of his heart rearranged, he might just be too tired and overwhelmed to resist this any longer.

Obi-Wan doesn’t react badly when Cody first kisses him; if anything, Cody thinks he’s kissing back, is sighing into Cody’s mouth, and when he feels a touch on the back of his neck it turns out to be Obi-Wan’s hand, finally pulled free. But he can’t hear much at all, nor see much, over the roaring in his ears, the maelstrom of some exterior force asking him what the _fuck_ he’s doing, and why, and what he intends to do with this selfish, unreasonably passionate bit of idiocy, and in the end it’s all he can do to put his head down on the floor above Obi-Wan’s shoulder and struggle for breath.

 _Wait_ , his ever more-familiar voices whisper, and Cody curls his fingers tightly into Obi-Wan’s hair, and does. The Force ebbs as he distractedly tries to curb it; it is bright and painful around him, flashing with color once more, this time golden.

 _Balance_ , he thinks, and breathes in again. _I shall become a man of peace._

“There,” Obi-Wan murmurs, and when Cody turns to look at him his General is smiling, his eyes as frankly loving as ever. “That is the way to do it.”

Cody kisses him again, and this time the Force turns silver, steel-tensile strong, and as he wraps up Obi-Wan in his arms and rocks against him Cody feels, with the composure of certainty, that he will get through this after all.

*

**TBC**

*


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I tend to be a bit random about fitting things into TCW's chronology - this is sort of an imaginary second assault on Scipio sometime post-"Crisis of the Heart"?

*

The alarm starts going off two hours before they are due to drop out of hyperspace. It takes Cody, still tired, a fair few minutes to get his eyes open, and when he finally succeeds he can't say - given that he's only been _asleep_ for two hours - that he particularly feels like getting up to switch the damn thing off.

Yet another reason why the Force is brilliant, he thinks, vaguely smug, and swats out with it - the clock shuts up with a final indignant chirp, and silence reigns.

Briefly.

"Judicious Force use," Obi-Wan mumbles, and turns over slightly under Cody's arm. "I feel sure I mentioned something about that at some stage."

"You did," Cody admits, on the end of a yawn. "You also made it clear I was free to disregard any of your more Padawan-inflected pronouncements."

"Did I?"

"You used those exact words."

"They do sound like mine."

"There you are, then."

Obi-Wan laughs under his breath; turns further, until he's looking up at Cody, still half-asleep, and given that it's only the third time Cody has gotten to see him like this it still makes his own breath catch. "How much time do we have?"

"Two hours until we hit Scipio's atmosphere."

"Very good." A pause, then, and even through half-open eyes Cody can tell he's being looked at, searchingly, like the General has suddenly woken up to his concern. "Are you looking forward to it?"

"Partly," Cody murmurs, and takes a moment, because he needs it, to figure out exactly how to say the rest of it, and what doesn't need to be said. "It'll be good for the men to have me back. And to make sure Rex doesn't get himself killed."

He's got a hand on Obi-Wan's hip, though, and he doesn't want to let go of this.

 _I can give you everything I am in this moment,_ the Jedi had said quietly, yesterday - fuck, was it just yesterday that they had embarked? it feels like it's been an age - _but don't ask questions of me._

_You will not like the answers I will have to give._

He's never wanted, Cody realizes, ever - to acknowledge anyone's generosity so much. Born and bred for a world in which there are expectations to be fulfilled or failed, he's never wanted - never _needed_ \- so much to say what this means to him. That he gets to do this: to tighten that hand on his General's waist, to lean down and be amazed that _he's_ the one causing this, the soft moans into the side of his neck, the utter relaxation and trust when he pushes and pulls the way he wants to and leaves lingering kisses down a pale back criss-crossed with thin scars.

The craziest thing about it all - as the Force that always seems hemmed-in and golden inside Kenobi flares and bursts out of him like a sunstorm, and the way he gasps Cody's name makes Cody see nothing but white - is that if there's anything Cody knows, it's that he's pretty sure that Obi-Wan feels precisely the same unbroken gratitude towards _him_ , too.

That neither of them seems able to speak a single word for or against something given so freely doesn't seem - satisfying, somehow. But to do so, Cody thinks, as he struggles for breath and shivers his way back into the coolly chrome and grey world of the ship, would ruin it all. Irrevocably, he thinks.

He's not going to take that chance.

The kriffing alarm goes off twice more before they are fully reminded of the fact that they are flying into a warzone. There is only half an hour left, eventually, when he and Kenobi are dressed and sitting in meditation across from each other, waiting for their hyperspace route to run out - and a lot to go over.

"You must be as strongly calm as you can when we arrive," Obi-Wan is saying, distantly, as Cody reaches his core and settles there, patiently waiting to be disturbed. "The Temple was full of beings who know how to control themselves, and understand the importance of setting a boundary around their presences. There will be far fewer Force users here, of course, but many millions more beings - most of which, of course, you already have a profound connection with."

"Could you feel us?" It is not quite dark, in the internal places where Cody finds himself taking shelter - there is a dull glow that seems to protect him from anything which might come plummeting down in search of him. "If we have never had Force-presences - "

"You exist," Obi-Wan interrupts, gently reprimanding: he has become more and more persistent on this theme during Cody's training, as though anxious to reassure his commander that he is valued. "Every living thing has a presence _in_ the Force. It makes up all things. And despite your similarities, I believe all of the Jedi came quite quickly to the realization that each clone has always been his own, unique man."

"Huh." Cody is rising out of it now, feeling loose-limbed and fully rested in a way, he knows now, he had never felt even after the most relaxing of shore-leaves in the last two years. "What did I feel like?"

Obi-Wan smiles at him; though Cody knows his question was vague, he knows it is being properly considered. The General had been fascinated, after all, to hear that Cody's impressions of the Force were so heavily filtered through color, sensation and light, and had immediately begun to interrogate what was to him apparently an entirely new worldview, determined to catalogue each and every one of Cody's instincts.

He seems to tilt slightly sideways, then, and Cody remembers the little Anzati youngling, made wide-eyed and lilting.

"Warmth," Kenobi says, as the proximity alarms start to ring, signaling their arrival. And then he gets up and turns away to the cockpit, without another word - but just that one is all the confirmation Cody will ever need.

The General turns out to have been right, as usual - when they come out of hyperspace and into the middle of the fleet the sheer life of it hits Cody in the gut like a crashing speeder, flipping chaotically and unthinking end over end. Each ship, as he gapes out of the cockpit, seems ablaze with light - frantic little buzzes and hums of it, rainbow-colored and constantly changing, each particle seeming identical until his mind skips haphazardly to the next and discovers it has utterly changed.

"Shit," he wheezes, and Kenobi looks at him with a crooked grin.

"I suggest you sit down," he says, and Cody complies without a word, collapsing into the co-pilot's seat as he tells himself, repeatedly, to calm himself the fuck out of this. There is a sort of pulsation going through Obi-Wan too, though, he can tell - the Jedi's eyes are fractionally wider than normal, as though greedy, feeding ecstatically if unconsciously on the sheer energy of it all.

"One more thing," Kenobi says, as their comms unit crackles and their little Republic shuttle begins to make its final sweep into the nearest Destroyer's hangar bay. He stands out of his chair, and briefly passes out of Cody's sight as he continues to sit, clasping his hands tightly together to keep them still.

When Obi-Wan hauls him upright with one hand, he has a little bundle of gifts in the other. Cody's helmet is mercifully unchanged, if also - thankfully - repaired, but the rest of it is new. His pauldrons have been repainted; overlaid on the yellow is the Jedi insignia, traced in white, visible only if you look hard but bright enough that Cody feels them like a brand. And there's a cloak, too, which Obi-Wan himself fastens into his armor with assured hands. Its weight is as assuring as ever, and it smells familiar, as though it's been slept in on campaign, as though it's soaked up rain and sand and everything they've both been forced through.

He's glad that he's got the helmet on, when he's finally able to speak and they're waiting for the hatch to open - it helps mask the fact that he doesn't know what to say. "Thank you."

"It has been my pleasure," Obi-Wan says quietly. He doesn't say what 'it' is - and he doesn't need to.

Rex is waiting for them in the hangar bay, looking tired but triumphant: he lights up in familiar umbers and muted reds as they come down the ramp, and whistles low before grinning and grabbing Cody up.

"Fancy," he laughs, and looks with delighted care at the new armor, turning Cody's arm so it catches the light. "Playing for both sides are you, Commander?"

"You could say that," Cody says, happier than he can really describe, and squeezes Rex back with enough strength that he can reassure them both that he's really here, and that this has happened. "Where's your General?"

"General Skywalker and Commander Tano are already on the planet surface, sir," Rex says, more respectfully, directing his answer towards Obi-Wan. "They had hoped to wait for your arrival before beginning the assault, but factors on the ground - "

"No matter. We will soon be joining them - and yourself, Captain. Anything else that we should know beyond the pre-battle briefing?"

"A slight wrinkle, sir," Rex says, once they have piled into a nearby troop transport with members of the 212th packed into its belly and the ice planet looming white and glittering below them. "General Skywalker wanted me to tell you that he's sensing a dark presence on the planet. He's not sure whether it's Dooku or Ventress but - "

Cody is not quite listening, by this point. He's looking back into the men - _his_ men, their chipped yellows and whites identifiable as fingerprints - and gladder than ever for the pseudo-anonymity his bucket affords him, because they're looking back at him, too. He knows that they must have heard something, or - he can only hope - are glad to have him back: but it's their lives, the very fact that they _live_ , which is fascinating him now.

They're all so _stable,_ he finds himself thinking, first - this squad of them exists in muted shades of burnished metals, but as he reaches out to them he finds that they feel like extensions of himself, too. He bleeds into them, _has_ bled, is picking up on what he has left of himself with them over months and years of them fighting under his lead. And they all -

He blinks. _Ah_. That's interesting. There is something in the core of them, of each of them, that he has never seen before - in fact, he barely sees it now, but he sees the space it leaves underneath the many layers of brotherhood and individuality they have built. It feels essential, somehow, and -

He catches his breath.

It's black. Tiny, glittering pieces of obsidian, unmoving, eternal.

He looks sideways.

Rex. Rex has it too. He has -

"Coming in to land," Rex is saying, sharply, and as Cody comes back to himself it is like he's suddenly been cured of deafness: they are deep into the Separatists' makeshift cityscape around the ruins of what had been the headquarters of the Intergalactic Banking Clan, and the air is thick with laser fire and cannon blasts, the gunship rattling with the concussion of them. Obi-Wan is looking back at Cody, keenly, and at Cody's nod turns away like it is any other battle, and like, as ever, he takes his Commander at his word when he says he is ready to fight.

It is unlike anything Cody has ever done. It takes him what feels like forever to sort through each and every one of his new stimuli, though when he counts the seconds he realizes that he has not lost any appreciable time. There is a weapon on his belt singing, practically screaming, to be used, and during the initial assault it takes everything he has to ignore the pleading of Jinn's lightsaber (much of which he thinks, paradoxically, is of his own mind's manufacturing) and lead his men with the familiarity of his blaster rifle.

He's pretty sure one of them - Waxer, he's almost certain - notices when Cody's armored hand bats away a blaster bolt that had been headed directly for the side of his helmet. Other than that, they give no sign that they have noticed his struggle.

Obi-Wan does, though. He knows that much. He knows it's not normal for his Jedi to stick this fucking close, for one thing - normally he'd be far off by now, ahead of them by leaps and bounds and gods damn the consequences. But now - now Cody could _be_ one of those consequences, and Cody suspects that's why the General sticks so closely by them all throughout the fierce firefight through the crumbling streets, as they join up with more squads, as they advance ever closer to the imploded headquarters.

There is a touch on Cody's arm, eventually, just when he's starting to get a hang of it all, and he looks sideways through the din to see Obi-Wan grinning at him, though with very little mirth.

"Brace yourself," the General shouts, barely audible, and that's when it slams into Cody's consciousness like a missile -

 _Damn_ it, Skywalker.

The young General is approaching, Cody can feel it - oh, shit, can he fucking _feel_ it. It's like there's a kriffing fireball roaring through the disintegrating city, eating up all the oxygen in its path. There's another presence, too, brightly, almost neon blue, but nowhere _near_ as powerful: Tano is allowing herself to fed from nonetheless, and taking as good as she gets, and sith hells, how in the galaxy had Obi-Wan _ever_ been able to stand it?

"With difficulty," the man himself says, with not a little humor, which is when Cody realizes he's been talking out loud, and probably babbling.

And then Obi-Wan's face falls.

"What is it?" Cody shouts, his radio crackling.

"Stay here," Kenobi orders, and starts to turn, and when Cody's hand holds him back his glance turns ruthless. "I said stay here! Keep the men in formation and hold this line."

"Why?"

"You know why," Obi-Wan says, and with that, he is gone, tearing down into the smoke with only his lightsaber illuminating his way, and all is forebodingly quiet.

Cody does as he's told - he orders the battalion into defensive positions, sets up surveillance on all the known avenues of escape from the besieged banking complex - and, once these things are done and there is no unusual sound beyond the constant barrage of Republic mortar fire screaming over their heads, he turns inward, and looks.

There is a darkness out there. He can sense it, though it has no specific form - or at least not one he knows.

It is the exact same color as -

And it's coming clos -

"What _have_ we here?"

Huh. So, not Ventress, Cody thinks, halfway through flying at what feels like an oddly slow and dreamlike speed into the nearest duracrete wall. Dooku. That's what it is, that slow-spiraling, subtly black pit.

The impact fucking hurts, and drives all the air out of his lungs, but he's up quickly, and this time, with his rifle in sparking pieces, he's reaching for the lightsaber. Dooku, serene and untouched in the hail of blaster bolts that are rocketing towards him from all sides, looks dangerously unamused as the green beam shoots out and Cody comes en garde - as though he's discovered something unpleasant on the sole of his finely-heeled boot.

"What," he says again, as he approaches, and his own lightsaber is purely red and dangerously smooth in Cody's mind's eye, as though it'll disappear if he takes his eyes off of it - "sort of mutant creation are _you_ , my friend?"

 _Most important you may be,_ Cody remembers Yoda saying, as he parries Dooku's first strike. He's not cut out for this, he knows, as everything he sees starts to swirl with dark smoke, until he feels cut off from the world entirely, until all he can focus on is making sure that damned beam of red doesn't touch him. He can't defeat Dooku, and he never will be able to, but -

 _But_ , he thinks, and grits his teeth, and pushes back hard enough that Dooku needs to find his balance, and the air, ever so briefly, clears enough that Cody can sense his salvation coming. _I have learned enough to know what you are, you bastard._

Dooku's eyes narrow sharply, and just like that, nearly sending Cody stumbling, the smothering penumbra of the Dark Side is sucked back into him like smoke pulled away by a wind. Cody is sweating hard in his armor, and his arm trembling with the weight of the lightsaber - but he can feel the Jedi coming, a conflagration of color rushing towards all of them with the force of a hurricane, and his men - his men will be safe, and -

Dooku looks at his hunched shoulders, hears the rasp of his breath. And then he looks up, behind Cody, towards the -

\- the 212th's snipers, in position on the rooftops, and -

" _Fuck,_ " Cody shouts, and clumsily drops the lightsaber as he turns: sure enough, dozens of stories up, screams are starting up, and at the wave of Dooku's hand, little specks of men are starting to fall.

 _Pick it up, Cody,_ Obi-Wan says: whether it's all in his head or whether it really is the Jedi speaking to him Cody doesn't know, and nor does he particularly care. It's the voice of reason, at any rate, and it's screaming loud and clear. _Pick it up, man. Turn around, damn it!_

He doesn't. He raises his empty hands, uses all of the little strength he has left and is determined, perhaps more than he has ever been, that they will not die today - they will not die because of what he has become. If it is his power that has put them in danger, he's damn well going to use it to save them.

The insidious, uncaring red comes for him, as he knew it would. It sears across his back just as the falling clones are within safe and slowing reach of the ground, in danger only of breaking a few bones.

He has done enough, and so he feels nothing at all as he falls.

*

**TBC**

*


	4. Chapter 4

*

It takes Cody a long time to wake up, and when he does, he actually - doesn't.

It's a strange place, the little void between awareness and wakefulness that the Force provides. He's felt it before, now, several times: mostly when coming out of meditation but even, once, when coming out of sleep. It's felt like a transitive phase, nothing more, one which encourages just a few more moments of reflection before the world demands his attention again.

This time, though - this time, he's pretty sure he should be glad to be stuck in it, because all he can see beyond the veil, were he to open his eyes, is grey, and behind him, reaching out for him in tendrils, is something he doesn't dare let touch him - a sluggy, pulsating mass that he knows threatens harm.

 _Huh_ , he thinks, looking back at it, calmly staring. _So that's what pain **looks** like._

He's also not alone: there is light above him and reaching down, familiar, steady, and suddenly his head feels like a head again. The pain becomes localized, halfway what he now knows is his back, and the essence of Obi-Wan that seeps into him is wrapping around the dulled edges of his mind like silk.

 _Hello there_ , it says. _It's good to have you back._

 _Thanks_ , he manages to respond, and even in this dreamscape he sounds hoarse, which seems funnier than it probably should be. _How long -_

_Four cycles. They had to do a number on what was left of your spinal cord._

Cody winces, and automatically starts cataloging just how many amends he now owes. He gives up quickly, sensing that it is an impossible task. _And now?_

 _They're ready to start waking you up, if you are._ There is a pause, then, as Cody looks uneasily back into that strange revelation of agony, and when Obi-Wan slips back into speech again he sounds uncertain of something. _What's this?_

_What's what?_

_This -_ it is very rare for Kenobi to be struggling for words, and that sends fear, unbidden and sharp, suddenly lancing through Cody's consciousness - _this small piece of you -_

Cody sees it suddenly, as though it has risen before his eyes. Kenobi, he can sense, can't see it for what it is, but Cody can. He can see it as though it has been plucked from his being and is lying in the palm of his hand, glittering black, with razor-sharp edges that will tear anything that approaches it. This strange, foreign - fuck, he thinks it is, he thinks it’s not right, but then why does it seem so _natural_ -

If there's anything he knows, though, if there's anything that his newly-honed intuition has taught him, it's that no-one, not even Obi-Wan, should be touching it don't touch it _don't touch it DON'T TOUCH IT -_

He comes awake punching for all he's worth, blinding himself when his eyes fly open and all he can see is white hospital lights, his knuckles flailing out and slamming into cloth-bound flesh and droid panels alike. And then the pain hits, and it's all he can do to let the air our of his lungs in a half-strangled scream, and it's Rex's colors which snap into view in front of his juddering eyes, a familiar calloused pair of hands clamping hard around the back of his neck.

"Down, brother," Rex growls, and Cody, struggling to breathe, obeys. He's on his stomach, he realizes, eventually, as he shakes himself back into being able to see, and his back feels like it's strapped up with an entire medbay's worth of bacta strips. The Force is there, but it feels weak in the face of what has been done to him, and apart from the beacon that is Rex his senses do seem to have gone dull, presenting every sensation in monochrome.

"Oh, fuck," he pants, helplessly, and puts his face in the crook of his elbow as Rex's thumb continues to press a firm, comforting sweep into the corner of his jaw. "Rex, are they - "

"They're fine. You caught them all. A couple of scrapes and bruises." Rex chuckles, then, and when Cody peeks out at him through the fine film of sweat that is building up on his face the Captain looks fairly normal, now, and exasperated as all hell. "You shouldn't've done that, Cody."

Cody blinks. "Why the fuck not?"

"Damn it, man, you know why," Rex says, gentler, and shakes Cody's head briefly between his hands. "I mean, fuck, I can't say I wouldn't have done the same, but you're - "

He stops there, and Cody, what he can feel of his stomach sinking, supplies the rest. "Different now, huh."

"That's not what I meant. Don't you dare," Rex warns, lowly.

"Yes it was."

"Fuck you," Rex says, but there is little heat in him - he just looks tired, and like, as always, he wants to take on some of Cody's burden. "You'd have said the same, if we switched places. We're not - "

"Stop," Cody says, and he is fully aware and functioning, now, and feels powerful saying it, even if he can't move a fucking muscle without needing to scream. "We're worth it, Rex. We always have been."

Rex sighs, leans forward so they're gathered in together and Cody can't see anything but his face, so like his own.

"Not at this price, vod," Rex murmurs. "Jedi or no Jedi."

Cody's not sure whether he wants to laugh or cry - he suspects either would hurt more than he can bear. "You'd've been better at this than me," he rasps, eventually, and puts his head back down, with his eyes screwed shut, so he doesn't have to see just how Rex will react. _You have always known how to be your own man._

"Oh hells no," Rex says, and though he's laughing Cody can tell how his voice is on the edge of cracking. "Not for love nor money."

"What's the damage, anyway?" Cody mumbles, coughing out the last of the soreness in his throat, as he becomes more and more aware of the medbay bed digging into his hipbones.

"Well," Rex huffs. "Dooku made a pretty good attempt at bisecting you, but the 212th's team managed to keep enough of you in one piece that the surgeons and bacta could do the rest..."

There is a small cough, then, polite and unassuming, from what must be the doorway, and - with a faint sense of dread - Cody is not surprised to see Obi-Wan standing there when he turns his head, one hand in thought at his beard and his face pale around ever-sharp blue eyes. Rex mutters something and stands, and though he immediately regrets it Cody knows the Captain has to go; there is too much, after all, that he needs to explain, and within moments he and the Jedi are alone.

Kenobi is calm as he makes his way into the room and lets the door slide shut behind him, and observant as ever - when he notices the slight shiver Cody feels building up in his shoulders, he reaches sideways to a control panel on the medbay wall and quickly palms in a temp rise which Cody can feel instantly seeping down into his bones - but when he sits where Rex had been there is a stillness to him that Cody thinks must not be right, and it takes him much longer than Cody would have expected to speak.

"Have we really been so negligent," Obi-Wan begins - so softly that Cody can barely hear him - "that you would risk so much to remind us of your humanity?"

It's so simply put, and so stunning to hear it said out loud, that for a long minute Cody has no idea how to respond. But he tries, anyway.

"It's not your fault," he starts, reluctantly. "It's not just who we are, what we were designed to be. It's a fucking army, isn't it? It's not meant to care."

"If our attempts have been in vain I can only say I am sorry - "

"It's a war and I _don't blame you,_ " Cody interrupts. He's going to pin his boldness on the medication that is no doubt rocketing through him, later, he can tell - because otherwise, quite a large part of him would probably be mortified not just at what he is saying, but how he is saying it. "But I just - I'll be damned if I'll just forget about what needs to be fixed, right when I'm given the power to fix it."

He watches Kenobi consider this - how the fact that he is so motionless betrays how deep his feelings, which Cody knows he is privileged to have glimpsed again and again, really run. _How sorrowful he is_ , Cody finds himself thinking, and when he shifts slightly and tries to reach out with a limp hand he is grateful, at least, to see the Jedi rouse himself enough to immediately take it, holding it tight between both palms.

"Thank you," Obi-Wan says, somewhat wondering, and Cody doesn't have the energy to openly acknowledge that he knows what he means by it.

He might doze off, then. It certainly feels like more time than he is strictly aware of has passed before he opens his eyes fully again, and when he does his grasp on the Force is undoubtedly stronger. He uses it to probe around him - feels Obi-Wan, close by, but no one else, though there are others, he can tell, further off and recovering like him - feels the diminishing, but still dangerous, beast of painful sensation that still wants to cut him in two.

So it's just Obi-Wan, then, to whom he turns when he's fully awake again, whom he stares at, realizing that there's something wrong, and to what he has to speak.

"Tell me," Kenobi says, gently, like there's nothing more at stake than the two of them in this one room - and so Cody takes a deep breath, and begins.

He talks about how whatever it is that is inside every clone, at the very heart of them, is the same fucking color as what he saw in Dooku: external to both of them, he thinks, but still wrong, and he doesn't understand where it came from.

How it feels as Other to him as peace did, once, when it was hovering nervously around him in the practice room at the Temple - but integral, too, like he and they all would cease to exist if it were to be taken from them.

How fucking _dangerous_ it feels. How it will slice right through anything or one who dares come near it. Deeply buried, but unmistakably malevolent.

 _Waiting_.

Obi-Wan listens, in perfect silence. The first thing he says, in the end, is:

"Tell me you don't believe that that is what you are. Because I don't."

Cody lets out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. "I don't believe it, no. Even if - even if I were conscious of going dark, sir, and it were true just for me - not all of us. Not every single one."

"Good." Obi-Wan leans in, then, and he is cool against Cody's lips, his kiss gentle and soothing and turning all of Cody's greys silver. "Rest. I will see what I can find out."

Cody tries to get up despite himself, because following the General is a reflex he'll probably never unlearn, and the half-smile Obi-Wan gives him when the pain sparks in front of his eyes and the air seizes in his chest, collapsing him back into his same shaking heap, tells him that Kenobi had expected it, too.

"What are you going to do?" Cody remembers to ask, just, as the General reaches the door and his eyelids are finally starting to fall.

"We have a lot of casualties," Obi-Wan says, quietly, with deep feeling behind his words. "One of them must need his head scanned."

Cody does fall into sleep, albeit against his will, and stays there for a long time. On one occasion, he opens his eyes briefly to see Rex sitting sprawled next to him, equally out for the count, half in and half out of his battle-scorched armor and snoring fit to wake the dead. On another, it is the Force that wakes him, whispering and happy and just intruding because it can, because – he can feel – Skywalker and Tano are close by and fiercely angry together, and it's like he can draw heat off of them as from a bonfire, warming him down to his gut.

Then, later – a deep pool of it, green and brown and bottomless as it turns into starlight, and he knows, beyond a shadow of doubt and even though he never bothers to wake up and check, that Yoda is with him.

_Huh. This must be some serious shit._

It's a week before he's able to sit up under his own power, which feels like far too long – but he manages it, at last, and it's Rex, solemn and quiet, who comes to get him into a hoverchair and brings him through the dead-quiet hallways of the hospital ship to another berth, identical to his, where the Jedi are waiting. Ahsoka wraps Cody up in a hug the moment she sees him, all gangly strength; Skywalker, who looks mercifully muted in the Force (he can thank Obi-Wan for that, Cody is sure) looks him over with something approaching hunger, his mind obviously working overtime to comprehend just what Cody has become.

Thankfully, he doesn't ask. And Yoda, too, is quiet, when he asks Cody - "Know him, do you?"

There's a clone lying in the narrow bed, clearly unconscious, though his eyes are half-open and staring mutely. The datapad that Obi-Wan hands him tells Cody that he's in the 212th, or was – but he must be a shiny, arrived while Cody was gone, because Cody doesn't recognize him. His designation is CT-9676, and he's fresh enough out of Kamino that he doesn't have a name, or tattoos, or anything that would make him recognizable beyond the fact that he's a brother – nothing, that is, besides the pitted wound snaking along the side of his head, raw and barely healing.

"What happened?"

"Scipio," Rex says grimly, and that doesn't bode well. It's been nearly two weeks, and if the kid hasn't woken up yet -

"Think we have found your mystery, we have, Commander," Yoda rasps. "A minuscule device, we have discovered."

"Implanted just here," Obi-Wan says, magnifying a bioscan readout on his datapad for Cody to look at, as Skywalker and Tano cluster in around his shoulders. "It took days to find it. It's almost unbelievable."

"Interesting choice of words, Master," Skywalker says, low and hard. "'Implanted'?"

"It is not made of biological matter so far as we have been able to discern. Of course, our concerns could be completely unfounded – it could be a piece of Kaminoan technology essential to your life functions."

"So, basically, we don't know whether it's bad news, or whether he'll die if we take it out," Rex mutters angrily.

"It has to come out." Cody is barely aware of having spoken, until he's being looked at by four sets of glinting Jedi eyes. "It's not right."

"Okay," Anakin says, looking Cody up and down. He's still slightly predatory-looking, like the Jedi back in the Temple who had said, with their gazes, that they would like nothing more than to break Cody down into his constituent parts and hunt down exactly what it was the Force had bestowed upon him. "Then let's do it."

The surgical droid is a fiendish thing, all blinking lights and quantum-speed calculations around its clicking, whirring, microscopic instruments – and despite knowing that he has been so recently (and successfully) the object of its attentions, Cody almost can't bear to look at it. He sinks as deep as he can into the Force, instead: bathes himself in its colors, wanders wonderingly through the galleries of fire Skywalker builds, through the fields where Ahsoka looks up at the sky. Yoda, whom he can sense taking a very close, monitoring interest in the little void they are seeking, he dares not touch – but Obi-Wan is there, of course, all-encompassing, following Cody determinedly down the oh-so-familiar pathways of the young clone's mind (which is heavy and dead around him for the most part, and if Cody had the energy to spare he'd want to just stop and mourn), towards the darkness that is not theirs.

 _I see it,_ Obi-Wan says, as though from very far away. He sounds astonished, and it's only then that Cody realizes that they are so closely entwined that Kenobi is seeing what _he_ sees, now, and that his colors are shared. _It's so Dark -_

The med-droid, buzzing, finds its way. And touches it. And -

The chaos bursts out immediately, pealing and shrieking like an impact warning through Cody's mind. Tano's blue reels back; Skywalker turns stock still; only Yoda maintains his calm, wraps himself suddenly and terrifyingly around them, stopping it all dead.

 _Suppressed it, I have,_ the ancient Jedi intones. _The signal_ -

CT-9676 is dying. Cody can feel the layers of him, still so young, collapsing in around them. He didn't deserve it, but death is coming, and it feels inevitable.

 _No_ , says a voice, as Cody rapidly recoils. _I won't let this happen._

_What?_

_I made you a promise._

_No, you fucking didn't - !_

But that's all there is: as Cody, with Rex's hands steady on his shoulders, reels his way back into the world of the living, all he can see is Obi-Wan's head on CT-9676's chest, their nerveless hands entwined as the surgical droid, sickeningly triumphant, holds up the glittering source of their shared pain.

They are breathing together, in relentless time, and Obi-Wan will not wake up.

*

**TBC**

*


	5. Chapter 5

*

Cody tries to stay calm, in the aftermath, and very nearly succeeds.

He lets Rex take care of him, holding him upright as he tries to stop reeling from the sensation of Obi-Wan's mind being snapped from his like every light he's ever known has been caustically switched off. He watches Yoda and Skywalker and Tano start briskly in on the stricken Master, their Force senses suddenly urgent and distant. He even lets the damn medical droid hover over him, buzzing its displeasure at his heartrate and at the fact that it's been left holding a bloody little piece of evidence that it doesn't know what to do with.

It's only when Rex takes the curt signal Skywalker gives him to grudging heart and starts pushing his hoverchair out of the room that everything in Cody's head starts to take violent exception to what the fuck just happened – and it _hurts_.

"Take me back."

"No," Rex says clearly, and waves over another droid to help manhandle Cody's aching body back into his own bed. "They're dealing with it."

"They're not," Cody says, breathlessly. He knows, at least partially, that he's not thinking straight. Unfortunately, knowing that isn't making fixing it any easier, not one fucking bit. "It's like he's fucking _gone,_ Rex – "

"He's _not,_ " Rex says firmly. He's looming over Cody in the half-light of the ward, stern-faced and commanding and everything Cody knows (again) that he should find comforting, but it isn't. It isn't, it isn't, and he _can't feel Obi-Wan -_

Obi-Wan, who'd told him, ever so briefly and so quietly that Cody could barely make out what he was saying, what it had felt like when his own Master died. He'd told Cody that, just a couple of days before this, when they were hyperspace and no-one else could hear him.

Was this -

"No," he says, out loud, and dimly, Cody can see Rex turn back at the door and look at him – Rex who doesn't know what to say. They've never been good at mourning, either of them; they had recognized early on that they'd drown if they let themselves feel the weight of every name and number they had to remember, and so they didn't.

And Rex knows this, and if he were thinking clearly, Cody would recognize it, and not feel like he does when Rex just looks away, crestfallen, and disappears out into the corridor again, perhaps responding to Skywalker's call -

\- he wouldn't feel like the sky is falling, and like his entire mind has turned black.

"Fuck," he grits out, and squeezes his eyes shut, clenches every part of himself tight in the effort to try and stay calm: and it works. Damn, does it ever work.

The pain in his back crests, as he desperately knows it would, and that, at least, is something to focus on. It snatches at him greedily, magnifies the maelstrom, turns the darkness into hardened jet. It feels real, it feels tangible. Like it means something, and like it could help. Which is fucking fantas -

\- _wrong_.

He forces his eyes open. Takes a deep breath, then another, grits his teeth and sucks in as much air as he can through his hitching lungs. _No, no, no. I won't let you._

It snarls at him, then, and that is the best proof he has had yet that this isn't just a panic attack. There's really an _It_ , out there and inside him, that wants him – that's done its best, in the last few minutes, to suck away everything he is and never let him go.

 _Fear_ , he hears Obi-Wan say. _Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to -_

Well, he's already got the last part covered, Cody thinks, and the ironic sourness of that thought is, incredibly, what seems to make it end – what leaves him staring near-sightlessly and quiet on his gurney, covered in sweat as though he's run through an entire week's worth of training in a few seconds, and with a headache fit to split his skull.

 _Learning something, you are?_ he hears, as though from very far away. He can't quite muster the energy to look and see whether the Master is physically with him, or whether he's receiving another pseudo-hallucination.

It must be the latter, because Yoda seems to chuckle at the thought. _Rest, Commander. Won this battle against the Dark, you have._

When he next wakes up, Cody is dully surprised to find that he feels a hell of a lot better. His mind is calm, his Force senses mostly restored; and when he tries to get up, he manages to build enough of a buffer that the pain of his mangled back no longer threatens to overwhelm him. He's even able to stand up for long enough to use the sonics in the 'fresher attached to his room, which must set off some sort of alert, because by the time he's finished gingerly wrestling himself into a medical coverall (because he's had enough of looking like an invalid, thank you very much) Yoda is waiting for him at his bedside, looking with eyebrows raised at his stumbling steps.

"Good to see you walking, it is," the ancient Jedi rasps, before Cody can say a word. "Pleased I am, with your recovery."

"Sir, I – "

"Come," Yoda says shortly, already turning away – he has brought another hoverchair with him, and although Cody is sick of the sight of them he can't deny its necessity. "Much to talk about, we have."

The medbay staff have dressed Obi-Wan in one of their thin shifts; no doubt he is more comfortable, but it's still a shock to see him that way, connected as he is to so many wires and attended by a silent, wary droid. They are still lying together, him and CT-9676, though now they do not touch; the briefest of glances at the monitors tell Cody that the young clone is essentially braindead. He will never have a name, now.

"What's wrong?" Cody asks hoarsely, unable to tear his eyes away and do Yoda the dignity of looking at him. "Why won't he wake up?"

"Quite safe, Kenobi is," Yoda hums thoughtfully. "That I can promise you, Commander. Lost he is not. Wandering, perhaps," he adds, with a strange, age-old smile, "but not lost. Return to us when his journey is complete, he will."

Cody laughs, and wants to reach out to touch Obi-Wan's hand, but doesn't. "I'll never be a real Jedi at this rate. I'll never learn how to be as cryptic as you, sir."

"Searching for answers, he is. As are we," Yoda says, and he is climbing laboriously upwards, then, settling himself on the arm of Cody's chair with his gimer stick across his knees. "Thought further, have you, on this mystery?"

He has the device in his wrinkled palm; it is so small that it takes Cody a moment to see it, and to his surprise, it no longer looks black. For all the trouble it's caused, it looks like nothing more than a tiny scrap of dented metal, blue-silver and harmless.

"Destroyed, it was, by the droid, on my orders," Yoda says, anticipating the question as he shakes it carefully into Cody's hand so he can take a closer look. "The signal it transmitted, stopped it was. Doing the work of the Dark Side, it is no longer."

"So it _was_ Dark," Cody says wonderingly, turning over the bent sliver with a fingernail. "And it's in every single one of us."

"But for what purpose, we know not," Yoda sighs. "But suspect, we now can, that some malignant force lies behind the establishment of the entire Army. In favor of war, I never was. But never did I think that the Sith could be the architects of all."

"You really think that that's what it is? That we're being controlled, or we could be?"

"Believe it, I do," Yoda nods. "Any alternative is too horrific to contemplate. And made his feelings on the matter quite clear, Master Kenobi did. Trust his judgement, I do."

Cody is reluctant to look at Yoda, then – embarrassed, almost, to see the kindliness in the tiny Jedi's eyes which says that he knows all about the conversations Cody and Obi-Wan have had, and about how stubbornly this one clone will deny that all several billion of them could knowingly cause harm.

"Sir," he says slowly. "How long, in your judgement, will it be before I'm able to undergo the surgery?"

Yoda's gaze narrows sharply at that, though not with any particular surprise. "Risk yourself you should not, Commander," he says eventually, his clawed hands neatly folded in front of him. "More likely it is that a healthier soldier will be asked to undergo the experiment. Captain Rex, perhaps – since close to this secret he is – "

"I will refuse to put any other clone in line for this, sir," Cody forces out. "We know that it's dangerous, and I can help track down what it is better than anyone."

"See your own value, you still do not," Yoda says, harder, his eyes turned beady. "Order the Captain to do it, I could."

"Well, that's your right," Cody mutters, and then tells himself to shut the hell up because in the midst of all his other problems he still cares just enough about regulations that he knows he's on the brink of a very serious insubordination indeed. He's tired again, he realizes, and all the more so for the sight of Obi-Wan so peacefully unmoving.

Yoda taps his stick against his knees for a moment, his head lowered, and then he clambers down off of the hoverchair, assuming a disheveled dignity back on the ground. "Wait, we will," he says. "Your health you must recover, and so must Obi-Wan. Inquiries we shall make as only we can, on Coruscant and at Kamino."

He pauses as he reaches the door, and looks back at Cody, who is feeling increasingly miserable. The reservoir that is Yoda in the Force, however, looks unchanged, not even a ripple disturbing his deep calm.

"In your opinion, Commander," he muses, "what is our worst fear for what we may find?"

 _That it turns us all into what you suspected of us the whole time_ , Cody thinks, unbidden. _That we really are slaves – and not **your** slaves, either._

"Mass disobedience, sir," he says, as calmly as he can. "Or mass death. Either way, I don't think we'd win our war."

 _Your war_ , he could have said – but he didn't. He's not that far gone, and he doesn't want to be.

"Hmm," Yoda says, and quietly totters off. In the silence that follows, Cody has the time only to briefly brush hair back off Obi-Wan's forehead before his own med-droid whistles into the room and peevishly takes him away.

The fleet has been put on ever-so-brief leave after the horror show that was Scipio, which is why they end up spending most of the next week simply patrolling hyperspace lanes, as though in some sort of galactic stasis. There’s nothing for it, in the end, except to wait, and to get better.

On the second day, Cody wakes to see that his auras have returned with a joyful vengeance, because when he turns his head to see Ahsoka sitting by his bedside she _herself_ is barely visible through the strobing light of her horizons. She swoops and skitters, and says comforting, uplifting things about how _wonderful it is, isn’t it, to feel all this_ , and he can’t but agree.

On the third day, CT-9676, with a small set of beeping, tired alarms and, eventually, a gallery of onlookers who may as well be standing at attention at a funeral, dies. Cody makes himself be still at the kid’s bedside for a few seconds, and gently close his eyes with the tips of his fingers, before he turns to look at Kenobi. Nothing has changed; the Jedi does not wake. Where Cody used to see his colors they are dormant; not vanished, at least, but as calm and unknowable as though they are hidden beneath ice.

By the fifth day, he’s recovered enough not only to be able to walk, but enough that Rex, in his few official hours off from making sure the fleet is shipshape for whenever their next major engagement might be, ends up in his room and trying his best to make sure, as Cody wants to make sure, that he’ll keep walking for a good long while.

“Push,” Rex orders, and Cody tries as hard as he can: the stretches he’s been told to work his way through every cycle in order to regain muscle control are probably too difficult for his current state, but he’d asked for them, and hell, if there’s anyone in the world he’d be okay with seeing just how hard it is for him to get through them, he’ll pick Rex any day.

“Better,” Rex says, nodding with satisfaction as he puts Cody’s leg down and pats his knee. “I’d say you’ve got nearly ninety percent range of motion in that one now.”

“And the other?”

“Eighty, maybe,” Rex says, prodding at Cody’s other foot. “We’ll work on it.”

“Heard anything new?”

“Not a thing,” Rex sighs, as he settles on the edge of Cody’s bed. “Except,” he continues, and there’s something calculating and exasperated in his face, now, “that Yoda wants a volunteer, and you ruled me out.”

 _Okay, apparently Rule Two about Jedi: cryptic **and** manipulative fucking gossips_ , Cody thinks mutinously, but he’s also not beyond seeing it as vaguely, cruelly funny. “Let’s not argue over who gets to risk their life on an operating table, shall we?”

“There shouldn’t be any argument. You’re still recovering, and you’ve got Kenobi to worry about.”

That persuades Cody to sit up on his elbows, and give Rex a sideways stare. “How long’ve you known?”

“Please, vod,” Rex sniggers. “I could see it the second you both stepped off of your transport at Scipio.”

“Well, great,” Cody grouses, and falls back again with a sigh. “He’ll be fine. In the meantime, we need to figure out what the hell’s going on.”

Rex’s hand is on Cody’s right leg again, and feels firm – once again, like a desperately-needed tether. “You’ve already scheduled it, haven’t you? The surgery.”

“Tomorrow,” Cody mumbles, closing his eyes. “There didn’t seem much point in waiting any longer.”

“Bastard,” Rex says, eventually, on the end of a laugh; he is sputtering in the Force, as though with uncertainty, as though everything he knows and is is in flux. “You’re more of a Jedi than you think.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Rex sighs. “They can’t stop thinking that they’re the ones who need to suffer the most.”

 _Only because there’s too much suffering to go around in the first place_ , Cody thinks, as he slides into sleep.

They’re all there when Cody hoists himself up onto the table: Yoda, Skywalker, and Tano in a little circle around him, Rex; and from the gallery of the theatre, he can sense other presences too. Windu, he thinks, because he remembers that particular tamped-down, perfectly still fury; other Jedi, perhaps, though he doesn’t sense anything of their names, only of their curiosity.

“Any change?” he murmurs to Rex, just in case, as the surgical droid trundles into place. The replying shake of the head is what he’d expected, but damn, he’d so hoped to be wrong.

“Attempt to extract the device whole and working this time, we will,” Yoda says, rough as gravel, as Cody lays flat. “Hold its impulses in check, we can, if successful we are, and then analysis will become possible.”

“You’ll have to guide us, Cody,” Skywalker says, coiling and excited. The young Knight is itching for the knowledge of it even more than Cody himself, and is frightening with it despite the moderating forces of the other Jedi on either side of him. “You know best where it is, and what it’ll do.”

“I’ll try,” Cody says, and looks vaguely, almost carelessly, down at the IV sedative that he can see starting to plunge its way into his arm.

“Try we do not,” Yoda grumbles, and that’s the last thing Cody properly hears as the little Force-space of not-sleep expands to become his whole world.

It draws him like a beacon, this time, and that doesn't feel right.

 _Hello there_ , it says, nastily, and fuck, but it knows just where to stick in its knife. _I've been waiting for you._

Cody doesn't say anything. He can't. He's just aware of everything that's making this alright, far above him: all the colors that are rallied at his back. The Thing doesn't have any. He had thought it black, at first, but now he can see that that's no longer right – its darkness is the absence of any color at all, the sort of pit that you could fall into headfirst without realizing that has no beginning and no end.

 _Don't deny me,_ it says, and this time there's something cajoling and angry beneath its attempt at smothering control, as though it can sense the oncoming probe that Cody feels like a wrecking ball crashing through his brain matter. _You can't live without me._

Somewhere, the surgical droid beeps its triumph –

\- and It takes its revenge, because when Cody opens his eyes he's pretty sure he's not supposed to be breathing dust, and inside his armor, and at the helm of a cannon pointing upwards into a towering canyon.

 _You are mine_ , it is yelling, as Cody handles the controls, plotting in launch vectors. There's a speck of movement on the canyon wall, far away, skittering in between the blaster bolts of battle. The sound of the surgical drill is coming ever closer, turning everything into a whirring din.

The cannon booms out, and -

"Got it," Skywalker says, gleeful.

"He's seizing," says someone else, and Ahsoka wraps Cody up in summer skies.

*

**TBC**

*


End file.
